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Liberian gold rush threatens forest preserve

SAPO NATIONAL PARK, Liberia — Red and black Diana monkeys lunge through the air, azure peacocks flap in the jungle canopy and a tiny zebra antelope stops in its tracks to heed the low moans of a Liberian hunter marking his prey for slaughter.

Here in Sapo National Park, a vast swath of Liberian rain forest, two decades of civil war have kept intact a treasure: one of the world's most diverse wildlife populations.

During 15 years of bloodshed that left about 200,000 Liberians dead, warriors intent on killing one another spared the large concentration of mammals, birds and other species that inhabit the 1,800 square kilometers, or 700 square miles, of this protected forest.

But now that the fighting has subsided and a 14,000-man United Nations peacekeeping mission has spread out to protect Liberia's human population, new threats to wildlife have emerged. A gold rush has invaded the forest, and with it a booming trade in "bush meat" to feed the prospectors, many of them homeless ex-combatants.

Liberia has some of the largest unexploited gold and diamond deposits in the world, but until fighting subsided in 2003 little mining took place in officially protected forests.

Now several thousand miners have moved into Sapo National Park, living in enclaves they call "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" - references to other chaotic lands occupied by strangers. They live in hastily constructed shacks; in their spare time, they relax at newly set up video entertainment halls. But most of their time is spent ripping trees of the virgin rain forest out at their roots in search of gold nuggets.

The miners use portable generators and water pumps to tear through the topsoil and pan for treasure, a technique that environmentalists say is likely to scar the Sapo reserve beyond recognition.

Western and Liberian wildlife experts warn that African elephants, pygmy hippos, bongos, duikers, leopards, chimps and dozens of other rare species are at risk. Because of the long civil war, surveys of Liberian forests are incomplete. But the jungles, which make up 42 percent of the Upper Guinean rain forest, are believed by Western wildlife experts to harbor 125 mammal species, 590 bird species, 74 kinds of reptiles and amphibians, and more than 1,000 insect species.

Ecologists say that peacekeepers have not done enough to halt the devastation. In response, the head of the UN mission this month ordered his forces to enter the forest and determine what it would take to expel the trespassers.

The envoy, Jacques Klein, special representative of Secretary General Kofi Annan, said, in an interview in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, that the ultimate goal of his peacekeepers was to persuade miners and poachers to abandon the national park.

The extent of the problem was apparent during treks into the forest with UN officials or Liberian guides over the past two weeks. On Sunday, after a helicopter ride from Monrovia followed by a grueling nine-hour hike through dense jungle in Sapo, a UN civil affairs officer confronted several hundred residents of the "Afghanistan" camp.

"It is illegal for you to live and work here," said the officer, Erin McCandless. "We will bring more people next week - including environmentalists - who are ready to help you with an alternative means of income." Several camp residents said they were ready to leave, but feared armed men outside the park.

Liberian forestry officials and environmental advocates contend that even a threat of serious force would probably frighten the gold miners and poachers from the park. They are lobbying the UN mission to drop leaflets from the skies and then move to drive miners and poachers out by torching thatch huts if necessary.

Anthony Taplah, head of forest conservation for the Forestry Development Authority of Liberia, said in an interview that no one, including the United Nations, was willing to assist him in the fight against miners and poachers. "Our timber industry went bust, and now villagers and ex-combatants have taken their fight into the forest," Taplah said.